


You'll Remember This

by AndreaLyn



Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foreman wants to know what he'll remember when he's as old as his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You'll Remember This

Foreman wonders if it’s in his family to forget and whether one day, he’ll wake up and won’t know anything. He wonders if that’s why he’s praying or whether it’s because Chase suggested it. He wonders when he started listening to guys like Chase.   
  
He wonders why he never took him up on that drink.  
  
*  
  
This is what Eric Foreman will remember, years from now, if he still has the capability. His thumb slowly brushing a line up a pale neck, the pulse beating harder than usual and his index and middle finger replace his thumb as he sits on a barstool and listens for the telltale signs of the heart that tell him that someone is alive. When he feels it, he eases back and nods just the once.   
  
“What is it?” Chase laughs, like he’s seriously worried about all these proceedings and he should be calling the ward to bring over that white jacket.  
  
Foreman isn’t sure what he was looking for. Maybe the pulse to tell him this is all real, or maybe just to test out his senses, test his memory so that late at night he can lie there and wonder if maybe it isn’t Cameron who’s working her way through the office, but Chase in his own subtle, passive-aggressive way.   
  
“You’re alive.”  
  
Chase furrows his brow and turns to the bartender to order another round and Foreman doesn’t get an answer to that, but he notices the way Chase’s hair has fallen to cover up the place his fingers had previously been, but in his mind’s eye, he still sees the contrast of the touch and he remembers the soft feel.   
  
When Chase turns back to hand him a tall pint of some-beer-or-other, Foreman seriously questions the notion of drowning his sorrows in a glass, because there’s never been any answer at the bottom that wasn’t just a depressing array of suds and regret.   
  
“How do you do it?” Foreman finally asks, not touching his drink and noticing that Chase hasn’t either. He’s noticed this before. Chase waits for someone else to take the first step before forming a shadow. Maybe he isn’t a kiss-ass. Maybe he just honestly doesn’t know how the hell to lead and can only follow in the example of countless others. “I can’t remember what color her shirt was and I’m losing her face in my head.” It echoes of their previous conversation, but Foreman has to ask again because it matters to him. It  _matters_  and that should be enough to warrant discussing it.   
  
Maybe Cameron’s lost her husband, but one loss in a field of gains isn’t much to speak of. She’s strong. She’ll bounce back from anything. He’d gotten it all wrong. Chase is the one who’s lost and continued to lose and has nothing to gain. Chase is the one he’ll have to deal with being bitter and snapping at work because  _Cameron_  broke his heart.   
  
Foreman wants to ask if Chase still remembers his mother’s face, but that doesn’t seem right. So he uses the guise of Kayla to ask, ‘how much do you remember about her?’  
  
“Not enough,” is Chase’s non-answer and Foreman’s not sure who it’s about. He debates asking about his father, but Chase had once told him long ago that he’d lost his father long before his death.   
  
*  
  
He’d handed in his resignation and had left the building with no regrets.  
  
By the time the next Tuesday rolls around and he stands there in the hallway watching Cameron reject Chase for the fourth Tuesday in a row, he might have started to regret leaving the place, but Foreman doesn’t stay for interpersonal things. That’s beneath him and not something a man in his shoes does.   
  
*  
  
He goes to the chapel to pray and finds Chase lurking in the doorway. “You know God’s in  _there_ , right?” Foreman asks, arching his eyebrow dubiously. He’s never seen Chase really go into the Chapel of his own volition and even when House drags them in there, he looks ready to bolt. He’d think the man was allergic to God or something.   
  
“I was waiting for you,” Chase points out. “You resigned?” he asks, like it’s some kind of personal betrayal against him and Foreman wants to remind Chase that a Judas he is not and if he wanted to be, then the Australian man is definitely the prime example of it at this hospital. “Why?”  
  
“Personal reasons,” Foreman answers tersely as he takes off his suit jacket and drapes it over his arm and enters the chapel, knowing that it’s a surefire way to shake Chase off his trail. He’d expected Cameron to do this and does this mean that the great force of Bad Ideas is sleeping together again?  
  
He doesn’t know why that bothers him so much and he just reminds himself that it denigrates their professional opinions in his eyes.   
  
Chase surprises him by following him in and in a hushed whisper, out of respect for an invisible, all-powerful being, tells Foreman, “You’re not going to become House just because you hang around him. It’s not osmosis.”  
  
“You catch the diagnoses,” Foreman points out.  
  
Chase falters at this, like he doesn’t see where this piece fits in the puzzle. “Okay, and?”  
  
“You make the diagnosis when House isn’t here to or when House screws it up. You’re not picking up House’s hatred towards people.” If anything, Chase has softened. He wouldn’t have expected the Chase of two years ago to offer drinks or prayer as a solution to him. He’d have expected that same two-years-ago-Chase to just laugh behind his back and sit back in his chair, pleased his competition wasn’t so perfect. “So are you saying it’s just me? I do terrible things because I’m a terrible person?”  
  
“I didn’t!” Chase starts, but it’s loud enough to echo and he hushes his voice suddenly, “I didn’t say that,” he argues quietly. “But either you think it’s House’s influence or you think it’s your own fault and one of the two won’t be solved by resigning.”  
  
He leaves at that, not slamming the door because it’s the House of God and Chase is still a faithful and fearful follower.   
  
*  
  
Repetition is key, he’s told. The more times he goes to see his mother, the better chance there is she’ll remember him. Some part of him doesn’t believe that though, no matter how many studies back it up. Repetition is also becoming the name of the game at work. Cameron doesn’t seem to care much that he’s going, and maybe it’s the article she’s still miffed about, but then the next day, she wants him to stay. Rinse, lather, repeat.   
  
House tries to get him to stay in his own misanthropic, not-helpful way, and Wilson keeps coming by for completely useless pep-talks.   
  
It’s Chase who’s starting to really get under his skin. “Why?” Foreman demands, on day five of his fourteen day waiting period.  
  
Chase doesn’t seem to have an answer to that and the younger doctor freezes in the hallway. That buys Foreman enough time to leave and wipe this occurrence from his memory, like a good shock to the head.   
  
*  
  
On day ten of the fourteen days, Chase finally shows up with a bottle of wine and a card and Foreman’s stuck wondering if Chase has really gone through denial to acceptance this fast and whether this is a gesture or if the wine’s really poisoned. “I figured,” Chase says, of the gifts, “that after so long, I ought to get you something.” There’s a note of defiance in his voice, like he doesn’t want to be doing this. Foreman knows the wine is a fairly expensive vintage and that Chase can’t really afford it, but he doesn’t exactly say ‘thank you’.   
  
It’s not that he thinks he deserves it, but it’s unexpectedly nice to pretend he does. It’s nicer to think of it as a gesture than a gift, or maybe a celebration of the fact he’s finally going.  
  
He watches Chase go, the ‘thank you’ still on his lips, but it never comes out and he’s stuck noticing that he never noticed the way Chase’s posture slouches like that before, like the weight of the world’s on his shoulders and refuses to get off.   
  
Foreman catches up to Chase by the elevators, card still unopened and wine still in his hands. “Hey,” he greets. “Listen…”  
  
Chase just shakes his head, cutting off Foreman’s next sentence with his own words, sure and firm. “I remember everything, but it took a while. Her eyes, her hair, the way her fingers shook in the evening. The tone of her voice and the love in her eyes. For two months, I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember the smell of her perfume or anything, but then it all hit me.” He glances around, like he’s about to catch someone eavesdropping and Foreman won’t put it past House to do.   
  
“So you’re saying it’ll happen,” Foreman says quietly.   
  
“I’m saying if you go, it won’t stop that. And it won’t stop you from making hard choices in the future. If you go,” Chase says and there’s a flicker of resentment in his eyes. “If you go, you’re just one more person to leave at the first sign of danger.”  
  
Foreman wants to tell Chase that of all things, this  _isn’t about him_  and he should get over himself, but before he can say that, Chase has abandoned the elevator for the stairs.  
  
*  
  
Four days later, Foreman wakes up and he remembers the look of betrayal on Chase’s face and all he can do is turn over and go back to sleep and ignore his cell phone ringing for the tenth time, likely House calling to tell him he’s late and he’s fired.  
  
Foreman’s laugh is that of a weary, exhausted man. His two weeks are up and House no longer controls him. That should give him joy and relief, but he just wants to fall back to sleep and pretend his fellowship never happened.   
  
*  
  
Two months from now, when Foreman has a nightmare about Princeton-Plainsboro, he thinks to himself, ‘I guess Chase was right’. He’s started a new job at a nearby hospital where he tends to the clinic and is bored most of the time, but doesn’t kill patients any of the time, and he sees Cameron sometimes for lunch and Wilson calls him for occasional consults and Cuddy checks in by e-mail, but Chase (ever the faithful lapdog) says nothing and never comes by.  
  
When he wakes up from the nightmare, he realizes it isn’t Lupe he’d seen, but Chase. That look of betrayal outside the elevators that day and when he fully wakes up in bed, he tries to forgot.   
  
So it’s him that makes the first move and he calls Chase’s apartment. When the voicemail hits the beep, he almost hangs up, but he doesn’t.   
  
“Hey,” he starts awkwardly, voice rough with sleep and regret and the hint of hating himself. “Listen. We should go out for drinks or something. Or maybe we can hit up a chapel.” Just to jog the memory of something else; something that doesn’t keep him anchored to a past he’s so ready to forget.  
  
Chase calls him back a week later and agrees and by then, Foreman’s already feeling better. It’s like he’s finally starting again. It’s like this is his first breath of fresh air and to be honest, it feels good.   
  
He’ll remember this. He knows he will.


End file.
